An element manager is a software application that is imbedded into or installed on a data center device (or element) or console that accesses a data center device, and is used to manage the device's particular data center resource. An element manager may not be responsible for managing other devices, but the device managed by the element manager may be dependent on functions performed by other devices within a data center system. For example, a server is dependent on the capacity and health of the hard drives that it is mapped to. Collection of element information and coordination of certain element tasks and operations can be achieved through a centralized manager controlled by a human operator. The centralized manager is an integrated software tool in the data center system that coordinates activities with element managers through a command line interface. The centralized manager gathers up and correlates resource inventory of the devices and harvests information from each of the element managers to simplify operations for the human operator.
For example, a storage system, such as the IBM® Storwize® V7000, may contain a storage element manager (V7000 controller) and a storage element (disk drive) as part of a fibre channel storage area network. The storage element manager may manage the storage resources of the storage element. A centralized manager, such as IBM® Systems Director®, may control certain actions such as configuration, provisioning, logical volume assignment, and zoning for the storage element, while the element manager may control more complex functions of the storage element. In addition to performing actions on the storage element, the centralized manager may also control other elements outside the storage system, such as a fibre channel switch of the storage area network and its corresponding network element manager.